


take my heart

by jenuyu



Series: heart attack [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenuyu/pseuds/jenuyu
Summary: Donghyuck has a list on his phone that’s titled, simply, “The Worst Days of My Life.”Confessing to someone who doesn’t know he exists? Yeah, that’s on his list. Accidentally sending his best friend to the hospital? Yup, it’s there, too. Spilling coffee on the hot new intern at work?Most definitely.





	take my heart

**Author's Note:**

> i’ll show you, only you,  
> for the first time  
> follow me, come with me,  
> hold my hand  
> [you and me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lznx5A7fNto)

Donghyuck has a list on his phone that’s titled, simply, “The Worst Days of My Life.” Before yesterday, the list was as follows:

3\. That time Donghyuck wanted to ask Jeno how the new jeans he bought from Uniqlo fit on him, let himself into Jaemin and Jeno’s apartment with his key, and ended up walking in on something no human should ever be forced to experience. He backed out as quickly as he could after that, but he’s never really been able to get the sound of Jaemin saying, “Say it. ‘Jaemin-oppa,’” out of his head. A week later, he sent Jaemin a bill for the therapist he spent a half hour venting to about Jaemin and Jeno and their weird-ass symbiotic relationship, and Jaemin, surprisingly enough, paid it in full.

2\. That time Donghyuck tried to make a pass at the Extremely Hot Basketball Player Wong Yukhei at a kickback but was cockblocked by some guy half his size (okay, Donghyuck’s exaggerating a little— Huang Renjun is only, like, an inch or two shorter than Donghyuck but his point still stands) and ended up crying into that kid Zhong Chenle’s hair on the sidewalk.

1\. That time Donghyuck found out he was an omega. It happened after a regular checkup in high school, and when he walked home with a little index card with his designation printed on it in his pocket, Jeno was waiting for him, legs crossed underneath him as he sat on the ground. It wasn’t even Donghyuck finding out he was an omega that made this day so crappy, because he didn’t have that much self-hatred or anything. No, it was Jeno catching a whiff of Donghyuck’s scent and immediately throwing up on him and having to be stabbed with his EpiPen that catapulted what normally would’ve been just another day in the life of a sixteen year old into the Worst Day of His Life.

And then yesterday happened.

It was the first day of Donghyuck’s summer internship at the local branch of a fashion magazine, a position that he fought tooth and nail for, a position he interviewed once over the phone and once over Skype and once more in person for, a position he dug his toes into the ground and withstood the grueling hell of rejections from other positions for, and needless to say, he was Ready with a capital R. That morning, he threw his blanket over himself at the crack of dawn and made himself breakfast for once in his lifetime before getting into the button-down he ironed specifically for his First Day at his internship.

And honestly? It was going great.

Johnny, who was in sales, loved him and told him he was just like a little brother. Doyoung, the local production editor, didn’t tell Donghyuck to get the fuck out and make sure not to slam the door on his ass on the way out (Donghyuck accidentally psyched himself out by googling Doyoung’s LinkedIn last night). Even Taeyong, their regional manager, gave Donghyuck a pat on his shoulder and told him he was looking forward to working together, and Donghyuck had to slap himself on the cheeks to force himself back to reality.

His cubicle was easy enough to find, just a empty and boring desk with three dividers between his space and those of the people around him.

Then, an hour after Donghyuck arrived and thirty minutes after Donghyuck plugged in his work laptop, a commotion started up at the entrance.

“—rry I was late, I got caught up helping a pregnant woman get to the hospital because she started going into labor and I couldn’t just leave her there on the sidewalk on her own, I’m so sorry, I’ll make it up to you—” Donghyuck heard, and he got up from his seat to wander over and see what was going on. Donghyuck pushed past Jaehyun, whose job he doesn’t remember, and Jungwoo, whose job he _really_ doesn’t remember, only to be met with Johnny’s broad back. Okay, that was fine. Donghyuck could deal with not seeing anything at all.

But then someone jostled him from behind, and Donghyuck smacked right into Johnny’s back, which of course sent the mug of coffee Johnny had been nursing careening straight into the air and—

Donghyuck fell onto the ground, an inevitable result of gravity’s pull on the earth and all of its inhabitants, and looked up to see the Hottest Boy He’s Ever Seen, his mouth open mid-word (oh, so he was the one who helped the pregnant woman), a lanyard with a nametag with the name Mark Lee hung around his neck (oh, so he was the other intern who’d been accepted this summer), and a rapidly growing brown stain smack dab in the center of his shirt (oh, so that’s where the coffee went).

“Oh, fuck me in the ass,” Donghyuck said, before clapping a hand over his mouth in alarm and whispering, more quietly, “Oh, sorry, excuse my language, frick me in the butt.”

Inexplicably Hot Intern Mark Lee laughed at that, which was a very cute and very confused sound, and if Donghyuck was being totally honest, it was something he’d be willing to willing to forgo looking at his horoscope for a day to hear again. No one else laughed, though, and Donghyuck felt a drop of the coffee on Mark’s shirt land on top of his head.

And there it was.

The Worst Day of His Life.

Period.

 

 

And obviously, when the proverbial shit hits the fan, there’s no one to go to except Jeno.

Donghyuck’s known Jeno for a criminally long time. Jeno’s been Donghyuck’s next door neighbor forever, and they grew up sharing a balcony of their apartment building. Jeno was Donghyuck’s first non-relative hug, first non-relative kiss, first make out session, and for a period of time, the only person who loved him enough to do something truly, truly crazy with him.

“I’ll be single forever,” Jeno moaned to Donghyuck once when they were sixteen, sprawled across Donghyuck’s bed with their legs tangled together. They were two kids who’d never been in love with anyone before, and it showed. “ _We’ll_ be single forever. No one wants us.”

“It’s okay, we’ll just get married when we’re thirty-five,” Donghyuck reasoned. “That dual-income household, am I right? Yay, tax breaks!”

“Why would I want to get married to you?”

Donghyuck gasped. “Why wouldn’t you want to get married to me? I’m literally the best thing that’s ever happened to you!” Then, to accentuate his point, he grabbed a pillow and smacked Jeno in the face, hard, with it, and Jeno spluttered, coming up for air and rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You sent me to the hospital when you presented!”

“That was only once!”

Long story short, Jeno agreed to a platonic marriage pact, one that lasted for four years up until Jeno admitted to him that he was living in sin with that sketchy roommate of his. Whatever, Donghyuck can improvise. Jeno’s always been a godless heathen anyway.

But hey, at least his boyfriend keeps the fridge stocked.

“I hope you have soju,” Donghyuck says, setting the pizza he’s brought down on the table and opening up the fridge. It’s become too commonplace now for him to come by their place whenever he wants to vent, and he’ll bring food over whenever he can just to offset the alcohol costs. “Oh, grapefruit chamisul, again? Why don’t you have the better stuff? It’s not like you can’t afford it.”

“It’s because you come over so often that I’d literally go broke buying you the nice stuff every time,” Jaemin says, watching as Donghyuck takes out a few bottles of soju and puts them all on one side of the table. “You can drink with Jeno today, I gotta go to the library.”

“What? Why? It’s a Saturday, you square.”

Jaemin makes a face. “Corporate finance quiz on Monday and Jeno’s being annoying. It’s at eight, too.”

“I’m not being annoying, though? I’m not? I’m not.” Jeno pops up next to Jaemin’s elbow. “That’s a lie.”

“Then what the fuck’s this?” Jaemin waves a hand in front of Jeno’s face, and if Donghyuck squints, he can barely make out small indents around the base of Jaemin’s middle finger. Jeno flushes, and Donghyuck wonders if there’s a story there. Mental note to self: ask Jeno about it.

Jeno sticks his tongue out at him. “Enjoy your portfolios and market shares or whatever, nerd.”

“If I fail this quiz and drop out of this class and have to retake it next semester and learn about externalities one more time, I’m going to need you to personally shoot me in the face,” Jaemin says, ducking around Donghyuck to grab his discarded backpack. He checks for his practice exams and problem sets inside before zipping the backpack closed.

“I wouldn’t shoot you in the face, it’s too nice,” Jeno says, following him to the door, and Donghyuck twists to watch them. It’s like watching a soap opera in real life. Why pay for Netflix when he can have this for free?

“Where would you shoot me, then?” Jaemin asks guilelessly, and Jeno leans in close to whisper something against his ear. Jaemin pulls back, horror evident on his face. “That’s a lie, you love me too much to.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Oh my god, can it and just fucking leave already!” Donghyuck tosses one of the throw pillows at Jaemin, just about ready to rip his hair out in frustration. “Begone!”

Jaemin gives Jeno and Donghyuck a mildly betrayed look before he gives Jeno a quick peck and shuffles out the door, his backpack on his shoulders, and it’s only after Donghyuck hears the key turn in the lock that he whirls around to face Jeno. “Dude, I still can’t believe you bagged a sugar daddy.”

“He isn’t my sugar daddy. He’s my boyfriend.”

“You’re living with him over the summer even when you’re not taking classes, he buys you things, and he’s hot. What else does he need to be a sugar daddy again?” Jeno opens his mouth to answer, and Donghyuck’s at least ninety-nine percent certain the next words out of Jeno’s mouth are going to be _because we love each other very much_ or something horrifying like that. “No, don’t answer it. I need help.”

“When do you not? Like, actually?”

Donghyuck flops as dramatically as he can onto Jeno’s old futon. It’s still tucked away into the corner of their living room, and Donghyuck’s spent more nights than he can care to count on it even though the mattress is lumpy by now and the frame sometimes squeaks when he shifts. “Jeno. Jeno, Jeno, Jeno. I fucked up. I super fucked up. There’s a super hot guy at work.”

Jeno gingerly sits down on the futon, and he reaches over to pat Donghyuck’s head. His palm rubs, warm, over Donghyuck’s forehead, and Donghyuck leans into it. “If he’s a super hot guy, then why is this bad?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Donghyuck cracks an eye open. Jeno’s staring down at him, his eyebrows creased in the middle, and Donghyuck sighs before getting up, ambling over to the table to grab a bottle of soju, and coming back to the futon. He leans against Jeno’s shoulder and cracks the bottle open and easily chugs half of it— huh, it goes down easier when he’s in A Mood— before opening his mouth again. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Donghyuck would be lying if he said he didn’t have any complaints about Jeno. Jeno wakes up too early and sleeps too lightly. He’s annoyingly clingy whenever he wants to be fed and annoyingly evasive whenever Donghyuck wants a hug. But Jeno ranks in the top millionth of one percent of all the best friends in the entire world, and that’s because he’s a good listener.

So Donghyuck goes through all the events of yesterday, starting from how he actually made something for breakfast that wasn’t just two shots of espresso, to knotting and unknotting his tie fifty times before deciding ties would be too formal, then, finally, to the Coffee Incident. When Donghyuck recounts how he spilled coffee all over Mark’s chest, Jeno winces.

“It could’ve been worse,” Jeno says, offering up a clearly half-baked reassurance, and Donghyuck wants nothing more than for a meteorite to come hurtling down to earth and land right at the back of his neck. He downs the rest of the bottle instead.

“ _How_?”

“It could’ve been hot coffee. If you spilled hot coffee on Mark—” Jeno whistles. “Rest in pieces, Donghyuck’s heart. And now that I think about it, also Mark, probably,” Jeno says after a moment’s thought. “Third degree burns aren’t exactly the best way to a man’s heart.”

“What should I do? Maybe I should just set my sights on, I don’t know, Johnny or something. He’s tall and hot. Probably rich, too. What about Doyoung? They’re both tall. And I haven’t spilled coffee on them. Am I rambling? I think I’m rambling. Can you pet my head some more?”

Donghyuck moans when Jeno reaches around him and kneads his knuckles into a particularly sore spot of his scalp, and he hears Jeno make a mildly disgusted noise. He starts mumbling quietly, picking at a loose thread on the futon’s sheets before he notices that there’s a suspicious looking stain on the sheet, and he edges away from it.

“Anyway, what should I do? Can you get me another one?”

“Do I look like your servant?”

“I’m literally going to throw up on you if you don't help me get wasted enough to forget yesterday ever happened.”

Jeno comes back with two more bottles, the caps already popped off, and Donghyuck gratefully takes one, taking a swig from it before he can even register its taste.

“So, tell me about this guy Mark. Do you have his Kakao? Did he give you his number?”

“No, god, I don’t,” Donghyuck whines. The ceiling is starting to spin, and he blinks, his head jerking off of Jeno’s shoulder in realization. “Oh, wait, I do. I got everyone’s contact info yesterday.” He picks himself off of Jeno’s shoulder and grabs his phone off of the ground before opening his Kakao app to Mark’s profile. “Here. Look. Isn’t he cute?”

Jeno takes Donghyuck’s phone and scrolls through Mark’s pictures. “He’s alright, I guess. I get it.”

“Don’t start a chat with him or anything, I’ll seriously kill you if you do,” Donghyuck mumbles, dropping his face onto the futon before remembering Jeno’s ass has been on it multiple times and rolling over to face the ceiling instead.

“Just tell him you think he’s cute and you wanna suck face,” Jeno says unhelpfully, reaching over to pinch Donghyuck’s ears. “There’s no use hiding everything and pretending everything’s fine when everything is, in fact, not fine. Story of your life.”

He groans, swatting Jeno’s hands away from him and snagging his bottle of soju.

“No,” Jeno says firmly, procuring a glass of water out of thin air and holding it to Donghyuck’s mouth. “Water first, then more alcohol. It either goes down your throat or all over your face.”

“That’s what he said,” Donghyuck says, an automatic reaction at this point, and he takes a quick glance at Jeno’s pursed lips. He’s at it again, pretending he’s the picture of innocence when he could drink Donghyuck under the table, but Donghyuck takes a swig of the water anyway. It takes a few more gulps before Jeno’s willing to relinquish his white-knuckled grip on the soju.

“You’re no help at all, this is literally the pot calling the kettle black,” Donghyuck whines again after another disappointing gulp. It was supposed to be strawberry flavored, but chamisul honestly just tastes like sadness and regret. “How can I tell him I want to suck face when the first thing I did was spill coffee all over him? Maybe I should just, I don’t know, be normal friends with him. This sucks. I hate it. Feelings suck.”

There’s a brief silence, then—

“Just think of it this way. You already fucked up your first impression with him. At least there’s nowhere else to go but up from here.”

Jeno has a point there, Donghyuck concedes, and with that, he sits up and downs the rest of his second bottle.

 

 

Donghyuck barely remembers falling asleep.

He and Jeno talked for the rest of the night about various things: just what Jeno did to Jaemin just before Donghyuck popped in that was so annoying (“That’s classified information.”), how Donghyuck’s Saturday was (“Shitty before Mark called and told me I didn’t need to pay for dry cleaning. Yay!”), whether or not Jeno’s been able to get Jaemin to come around to getting a cat or three (“He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s already agreed to it.”), and what Donghyuck’s going to do from now on (“I dunno, play it cool, I guess.” “Like you’ve been doing?” “Yeah, just like that.”).

Somewhere after their discussions about Jaemin’s trust fund (“It’s pretty big? Like, big enough for him to live comfortably with it. I’m really not sure, though. I’ve never seen it.” “Yeah, yours is nonexistent anyway. Although I would’ve thought that you’d have seen it already by now?” “I hate you so much.”) and Donghyuck’s impression of his coworkers (“Real talk, I’d let any of them smash. Like, any of them.” “No way, really?” “Uh, _yeah_ , really. They can all come and get it. Especially Johnny.”), he dozes off, his head slipping onto Jeno’s thighs and his now-empty third bottle of chamisul dropping onto the rug beneath them.

When he opens his eyes again, he realizes that he and Jeno aren’t alone in the apartment anymore. There are the hushed, low whispers of Jaemin and Jeno having a conversation in the bedroom, and when Donghyuck reaches out blindly for his phone, he realizes several things in quick succession.

One, Jeno’s taken the liberty to change him out of his admittedly too-tight jeans and into pajama pants. Donghyuck would be clutching his pearls if it had been anyone else, but Jeno’s seen him at his worst. This is barely a three on the scale of Donghyuck’s Worst Moments, zero being A Pretty Good Day and ten being the Coffee Incident.

Two, he’s curled up on the futon, a pillow underneath his head and a blanket over his shoulders and, when he looks down (big mistake, Donghyuck realizes in hindsight), there’s a bright neon pink bucket right beneath him.

Which brings him to his final point.

Three, _damn_ , his friends are actually pretty decent.

The conversation in the other room stopped as soon as Donghyuck started shifting around and reorienting himself, and he almost feels bad. Almost. Instead, he tries to swallow what little saliva is in his mouth to combat the sudden dryness in his throat and he half-yells, half-slurs, “Just pretend like I’m not here!”

Jeno bursts out of the bedroom and races for the kitchen and grabs a glass of water before he beelines for Donghyuck’s futon, the picture of an angel hard at work. As Jeno tuts irritably at him about irresponsible drinking or whatever because no self-respecting college kid would ever drink water in between shots, Donghyuck has the sudden thought that _ah, this must be what Jaemin sees in him_.

“Go back to sleep, dumbshit,” Jeno says, almost affectionately, and he pats Donghyuck on the forehead. It’s not a gentle pat, not by any means, but Donghyuck grabs Jeno’s hand when he moves to pull it away and places it back on his head.

“More.”

“Please don’t get my futon dirty dreaming about Mark tonight,” Jeno says later, getting up once he’s given Donghyuck his obligatory five minutes of head scritches and moving to leave.

“That’s actually a good idea, thanks,” Donghyuck says. Or maybe he doesn’t. He’s fast asleep even before he remembers he wanted to say that.

 

 

Monday morning finds Donghyuck at the office again, bright and early. He’d spent the entirety of Sunday nursing his hangover, curled up underneath a blanket that smells like Jeno, for better or for worse, and Jaemin had stopped to point and laugh at him no fewer than five times. Donghyuck hopes he fails his corporate finance quiz.

When he settles into his seat, it takes him just a moment to realize there’s something different about his cubicle. It’s only when Mark sits down across from him and says to him, “Hey, good morning,” that Donghyuck’s brain decides to come back from hibernation and participate again.

“Oh,” Donghyuck says, rather absently, “what happened to the cubicle dividers?”

Mark shrugs off his blazer and hangs it on the back of his chair before sliding into his own seat. “I’m not totally sure, but I heard Jaehyun from marketing say it’s to,” and here he makes little air quotes with his fingers, “boost morale and encourage bonding.”

“Huh.” Donghyuck accidentally meets Mark’s eyes, which does absolutely nothing but remind him of the Worst Day of his Life again. “Oh, shit, wait, Mark. I’m so sorry, I never got to apologize to you for, um.”

“The coffee thing?” Mark suggests lightly, and Donghyuck winces.

“Yeah. That. Okay, I swear I wasn’t trying to do it on purpose or anything, someone just bumped into me from behind and it just. You. Sorry. I know you called and said you didn’t need me to pay for dry cleaning, but are you sure?” Donghyuck offers. “It’s really the least I can do.”

“Oh, no, it’s really fine.”

Donghyuck frowns. “I feel bad, though. Wasn’t it kinda expensive?”

“Nah,” Mark laughs. “My roommate is, like, loaded because he’s some richass trust fund baby, so I just threw my shirt and blazer in with the shit he wanted dry cleaned over the weekend. So seriously, it’s no big deal.”

“Alright, if you say so.”

“I _am_ saying so. Nothing I love more than spending someone else’s money.”

Donghyuck thinks about Jaemin and Jeno and how many times he’s mooched off of them in the name of friendship, and he sighs wistfully. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Mark smiles at him again, and Donghyuck swears he’s about to say something else before Doyoung walks by and he clams up. Doyoung drops a stack of folders in the middle of their desks before he flattens his palms on the table and looks at them, his gaze darting in between theirs.

“Alright, kids. We picked the two of you from a pool of twenty extremely qualified students, so I hope you’ll prove me right in vouching for you to be our interns this summer. You’ll be helping Jungwoo, one of our staff writers for the culture section, with research for some pieces he’s been assigned to.” Doyoung thumbs through the folders, and Donghyuck watches him with a wary gaze. He seems like the type to pull some kind of power move, but Donghyuck doesn’t have a read on him yet. “Hmm, what else? Oh, right.”

“The guys in the office on the other side of the city deal with more of the photography side of our magazine, so if either of you ever wants to go check it out, just let me know and I’ll arrange something with Taeyong, got it?” Doyoung fixes them with a stern gaze before he breaks out into a gummy smile. “Cool. Good to have you both on board with us this summer. My office is at the end of the hall. Feel free to harass Jaehyun or Johnny if you ever have any questions.”

Donghyuck and Mark are quiet as Doyoung leaves, and Mark’s the first one to break the silence.

“Well,” Mark starts, “let’s prove him right, yeah? Looks like there are only two big folders, so rock paper scissors, winner gets to choose the assignment?”

“You’re on,” Donghyuck says, and he sticks his fist out. “I’ll have you know, I’m pretty damn good at rock paper scissors.”

“We’ll see about that,” Mark hums, and Donghyuck gets a sinking feeling in his chest, the same one he always gets whenever he forgets to bring an umbrella and looks up at a cloudy sky, or the same one he always gets whenever he makes it halfway to school with a winter coat before realizing it’s not going to get any colder than room temperature today.

And, well, Donghyuck’s instincts are rarely wrong. Damn it.

“Hmm, what to do, what to take,” Mark murmurs underneath his breath after his decisive victory, fishing through the folders and flipping them open. “This is so hard. The history of the beaver as inspiration for style, or trends in men’s fashion as influenced by music. This is so, so hard.”

Donghyuck grits his jaw, saying through clenched teeth that, “I love beavers, so the joke’s on you, Mark Lee.”

Mark stares at him. “Actually, I wanted to do that one. You can have the one about the music trend stuff.”

Donghyuck stares back at Mark. “What.”

“Yeah. It’s all yours. Grew up in Canada, so I know a hell of a lot about beavers and beaver tails and beaver hats. Kinda comes with the territory, you know?”

Mark hands over the folder, and Donghyuck flips through it carefully, almost reverently. Here it is, his first step towards becoming the editor-in-chief of a high-end couture magazine. The words and graphs, as dry and bland as they are on the sheets of paper, shine up at him, and Donghyuck blinks down at them, his throat closing up.

“Dude, are you okay? Are you _crying_?”

“No,” Donghyuck says vehemently, dragging his wrist across his eyes and keeping his gaze firmly downturned. “You’re crying, not me. I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. I have allergies.”

“Alrighty, have it your way,” he hears Mark say, and then there’s a tissue right in front of him. Mark shakes the tissue, and Donghyuck takes it. “For your allergies.”

Donghyuck doesn’t have any allergies. But he blows his nose anyway, pursing his lips at Mark. Now that he’s over his initial _wow what a cute boy wow I just spilled someone else’s coffee all over him wow I need to run into the ocean and never come back_ phase, he can finally take this friendship for what it was supposed to be all along. “Yeah. Thanks. For my allergies.”

 

 

It’s later, when they’ve started looking up sources and combing through potential interviewees, that Mark looks up from his laptop. Donghyuck’s in the middle of jotting down the contact info for one of Korea University’s most respected experts on music history when Mark sends a badly folded airplane sailing onto Donghyuck’s notepad.

Donghyuck looks up at him, and Mark motions to it, mouthing _open it_.

So he does, opening up the airplane and smoothing it out, and right there, the post-it in front of him reads:

 _Circle one!_  
_Loser does coffee runs_  
_for the winner for a week:_  
_yes or no_

“What do you mean by winner and loser?” Donghyuck asks, reaching for his pen and tapping it against the note. He doodles a bunny in the corner, giving it Doyoung’s fringe, and Mark snorts when he sees it.

“First one who finishes their copy wins?”

“You’re on, Lee.” Donghyuck circles the _yes_ with a flourish, and he folds it up into an airplane, all crisp corners and straight lines, before sending it sailing back over to Mark’s side of the table. Mark takes it and plops it onto his lamp, wordless. “You’re not even gonna read it?”

“I literally watched you circle yes, Donghyuck, why would I rip up your airplane?”

Donghyuck feels his face heat up for some reason, and he turns back to his laptop, mumbling, “I could always just make you another one.”

Mark only hums, going back to his work, and Donghyuck settles back into sending Mark links to relevant interviews about beavers and the occasional gifs of hamsters. It’s the end of the day before they know it, and Doyoung passes by their table with a messenger bag slung across his chest, tapping the side of the desk to get their attention.

“Hey, you’re not heading out yet?”

Donghyuck catches Mark’s eyes, and Mark looks up at the production editor. “No, not yet, Donghyuck and I were just going to wrap things up and then head out soon.”

It’s all quiet again once Doyoung leaves, the only sound in the office the clacking of their keyboards. Donghyuck is halfway through an interview with Vogue Korea’s editor-in-chief when he hears Mark’s stomach grumble. He’s about to say something about it when his own stomach rumbles, and Mark laughs under his breath.

“Skipped lunch, too?”

In lieu of a response, Donghyuck grabs a post-it from his stack, scrawling down _Circle one! Dinner in five: yes or no?_ on it before folding it into a plane and lightly flicking it over onto Mark’s side of the table. He watches as Mark opens it up, and when Mark finally, finally looks at him, he’s smiling.

 _This is just a platonic thing, don’t be stupid,_ Donghyuck thinks frantically, packing his things as quickly as he can, shoving his laptop and his tablet into his bag and grabbing his water bottle and tossing it in there as well. But Mark insists on paying for their sushi and offers to walk Donghyuck back home, and when he turns back to wave in the dim light of the streetlamp outside his apartment, Donghyuck feels it again, that familiar and definitely not platonic warmth rising up in his chest.

His housemate Yangyang looks up at Donghyuck in alarm when he ducks inside and slams the door closed, a futile attempt to shut the door on the feelings threatening to encroach on his heart again. Not again. He thought he was over this entire feelings business— he’s been trying his best to condition himself to have an allergic reaction whenever he felt any emotion, but that isn’t working out too well.

“Dammit,” Donghyuck mutters under his breath, kicking a sandal aside as he tromps to his room. “God, I hate having feelings.”

“Are you having boy troubles again?” Yangyang asks, getting up and following him, his voice going soft the way it always does whenever he senses Donghyuck about to use up half a box of tissues. “You wanna talk about it?”

“ _Nope_ ,” Donghyuck seethes, flopping onto his bed and staring up at the ceiling. Like he wants to talk about feelings to Yangyang. This is the problem with sharing an apartment with three guys who may or may not be in some convoluted polyamorous relationship— he knows nothing he says to Yangyang’s going to stay a secret for long, and like hell he wants five guys (Jeno, Jeno’s sugar daddy slash boyfriend slash Jaemin, and his three housemates) knowing about Mark. “No feelings here to talk about, no sir.”

“Well,” Yangyang starts, “there’s really no sense in keeping everything bottled up, you know. You might explode. Like a balloon. Not a pretty death at all. And I know how much you want an open casket funeral.”

Donghyuck groans, rolling over and wondering if it’s possible to die from mercury poisoning from sushi. He’s never wanted anything more. Anything to escape this interrogation. “I’ve never had feelings before, I have no idea what you mean.”

“Suit yourself.” Donghyuck can practically hear Yangyang rolling his eyes and shrugging. He turns to leave, cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling, “Hey, who the hell took the rest of the pork sung? I was saving that for breakfast tomorrow!”

“Guanheng did!” Someone who sounds a lot like Dejun yells back from one of the other bedrooms. There’s a noise that sounds like a scuffle, then a muffled thump. “Ow, _get off_!”

The voices disappear when Donghyuck gets up and goes to his desk and slips his headphones on, opening his mail client back up again. There’s an email from Mark at the very top, above some emails from Doyoung and Jungwoo about his assignment, and Donghyuck clicks into that one first.

 

 **From:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**To:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**Subject:** :)

Hey Donghyuck,

Dinner was fun tonight! That place was good, we should go back and try out something new next time. Sent you some pics I took of the food, thought you might wanna have them for your insta.

Oh, I found some stuff about your music/fashion piece when I was looking up sources for my beaver article, I can send it to you now or upload them in our team drive? Lmk!

\- Mark

Attachments: IMG_0807.jpg, IMG_0825.jpg

 

Yep. Donghyuck stares at the wall, feeling something like panic crawl into the forefront of his brain. This is totally platonic. One hundred percent.

 

 

“So you’re in love with him. Why don’t you just, I don’t know, just ask him very nicely to date you? It’s been, like, two weeks, and I’m sure he’d be into you. He looks like the kinda guy to be into weirdos like you.”

Donghyuck narrows his eyes at Jaemin, who only beams brightly at him. Donghyuck doesn’t even want to ask what Jaemin means. Jeno begged out of dinner, claiming he had a CPR or RCP or whatever to finish running in lab, so it’s just Jaemin and Donghyuck sitting at a booth in a burger place near Donghyuck’s apartment.

“Shut up, oh my god. I’m not in love with him, you disgusting sap.” Donghyuck takes a vicious bite out of the burger. “I just wanna be friends with him, and besides, if something weird happens between us, it’s gonna make work so awkward.”

“I’m willing to bet you anything that if he’s as much of a goody two shoes as you think he is, he’s a total freak in bed. Like, seriously. Real talk.” Jaemin looks up at the ceiling, considering. “Five bucks he’s an alpha, you always seem to be able to find them wherever you go. Ooh, maybe we can market that. Use Donghyuck’s alpha radar and get the knot of your dreams, guaranteed.”

Donghyuck nearly chokes on his bite. “You need help.”

“I’m literally just trying to move your love life the fuck along from where it collapsed and died of a sudden heart attack after Yu—”

“Don’t,” Donghyuck hisses, “say his name.”

“Whatever, no use helping someone who doesn’t wanna be helped.” Jaemin takes a loud slurp of his iced tea before his eyes wander off to the side to somewhere behind Donghyuck’s head. His smile widens. “Oh, speak of the devil,” he murmurs. “Or devils?”

“Hey, Donghyuck! Never thought I’d run into you here!”

Donghyuck doesn’t want to turn around. He really, really doesn’t want to. Which is why when Mark rounds the booth and leans down into Donghyuck’s line of vision, Donghyuck makes an embarrassingly squeaky kind of noise. But then some cogs turn in Donghyuck’s brain, and he looks up, and shit, all hundred and eighty-seven centimeters of Wong Yukhei, Donghyuck’s ill-fated crush last semester in Medical Ethics and still an Extremely Hot Basketball Player, are standing behind Mark.

“Hi,” Donghyuck says faintly. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing much, just dropped by with my roommate for some dinner. Oh, wait, I don’t think you’ve ever met each other. Donghyuck, this is Yukhei, my roommate. Yukhei, this is Donghyuck. He’s my co-intern at Neo Couture. Saved my ass when he gave me some beavers the other day.”

Yukhei laughs, a confused one, and Donghyuck feels the last vestiges of his crush flicker to life once more, and he stamps it out as fast as he can. His heart can only take so much. “Beavers?”

“I’ll tell you when we get home.”

Jaemin raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, and Donghyuck’s never been more grateful for his existence than now. Until Jaemin lets go of the straw in his mouth with a loud and extremely audible pop and opens his big fat mouth and asks, “So are you guys roommates or,” and he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, “ _roommates_?”

Mark blinks at him, clearly not understanding.

 _You sweet summer child,_ Donghyuck thinks miserably, already plotting Jaemin’s eventual murder by asphyxiation and the subsequent disposal of his body in a vat of hydrochloric acid he’ll force Jeno to steal from his lab. Then a light bulb blinks on in Mark’s brain— Donghyuck can see the exact moment it happens because his eyes light up— and he waves his arms around, chuckling to himself. “Nah, we’re just roommates. Yukhei already has a tiny murder man.”

“His name’s _Renjun_ , not tiny murder man.”

“Sounds the same to me, though?” Mark turns his gaze to them. “What about you, Donghyuck? Who’s this? I don’t think I’ve ever met him before?”

“I’m Jaemin. Donghyuck crashes at my place sometimes. He’s a freeloader.” Jaemin’s smile is deceptively charming, and Mark doesn’t seem to be able to discern the waves of _hi, I’m the biggest asshole in the history of the entire world_ rolling off of Jaemin, taking the proffered hand and shaking it.

“What’s your story? Is Donghyuck a freeloader or,” and dammit, Mark makes a valiant attempt at raising his eyebrows suggestively too,” a _freeloader_?”

“Nah, got my own freeloader already,” Jaemin says, airy and without a single care in the world. Donghyuck envies him sometimes. “I don’t really want Hyuck, anyway. Like they say, never stick your dick in crazy. He’s all yours.”

Donghyuck kicks Jaemin hard under the table, but it’s too late. The damage has been done, and Donghyuck looks over to see Mark blinking at them. “Uh. I can explain.”

“Shit, sorry, could you explain to me another time? We should probably get going.” Mark checks his watch. “Yukhei and I have an IM game tonight and we might be late if we don’t grab dinner soon.”

“But—”

“Sorry for interrupting your dinner, you two! It was good seeing you outside of the office, Donghyuck!” And with a final parting wave, Mark’s disappeared around the corner, Yukhei in tow, and Donghyuck watches them leave just like he’s watched the potential of a relationship crash and burn in front of his eyes. Which he has.

He glares at Jaemin, who grins at him, completely oblivious to Donghyuck’s inner turmoil.

“Well, that went well. At least now we know he’s not dating Yukhei,” Jaemin muses, swirling his straw around his glass. “That would be so shitty. Not for him, I mean. For you.”

Donghyuck resists the urge to scream. Or to run out of the restaurant and flag the closest taxi and request to be driven to the airport so he can fly himself home to Jeju. Or to grab the butter knife right in front of him and stab it directly into the space where Jaemin’s heart would be if he even had one. Instead, he grabs Jaemin’s iced tea and downs the entire thing in one go, slamming the glass down on the table and making it rattle.

“Also, he asked if you were single! You’ve actually got a chance!”

That butter knife is looking so, so appealing right about now.

 

 

“About yesterday,” Donghyuck says, setting what’s left of his burrito down on the foil. Mark looks up from the remnants of his fish tacos. There’s a smudge of green sauce above his lip, and Donghyuck resists the very intense urge to lean over and wipe it off for him. “Wait, you have a—”

He gestures at his own lip, and Mark mirrors his motion before realizing what’s there and wiping it off with a tissue. “Thanks. What were you saying again?”

What was he saying again? Oh, right.

“Jaemin’s weird. Don’t take anything he said last night seriously.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s annoying and literally out to ruin my life. Don’t make deals with demons.”

Mark wrinkles his nose. “He seemed pretty nice yesterday, though?”

“It’s all a lie! That’s just what he wants you to think!” Donghyuck reaches for one of Mark’s leftover chips, dunking it savagely into his sauce, and Mark makes an affronted noise. “Hey, you weren’t gonna eat it anyway. How was your IM game?”

“We lost, but it was fine. Don’t think I had any chance of winning, anyway, since Yukhei always gets so damn distracted whenever his boyfriend’s around.”

“Really?” Actually, Donghyuck can imagine that. Yukhei always seemed like the type to be easily distracted.

“Yeah, it’s actually kinda cute? But, like, not when we’re trying to win a game and Yukhei’s out here trying to make half-court shots just to impress Renjun.” Mark sighs, reaching for one of Donghyuck’s fries and popping it in his mouth. “It doesn’t really matter, since IM barely even counts and Yukhei only does this for fun, but still.”

“It’s okay, your worth as a human isn’t dictated by how many layups you can make in a stupid IM basketball game.” Donghyuck leans over to pat Mark’s hand. “You’re better than that.”

The corner of Mark’s lips quirks upward. “What’s it dictated by then?”

Donghyuck pauses before saying, as solemnly as he can, “How many words you have in your article right now.”

“Oh, really? I’m done, how much am I worth?”

“No way.”

“Yes way. Finished it last night, actually.”

Mark unlocks his phone, pulling up Google Docs, and he tosses it at Donghyuck before he leans back in his chair. Donghyuck scrolls through the doc with increasing alarm, reading paragraph after paragraph about how _beavers_ , fucking _beavers_ , played a role in revitalizing the Canadian fashion industry. He’s at the section about how beaver hats spread in popularity across Europe when he has to stop. He has to, if only for his own sanity. When he looks over, Mark’s smile has only spread, and Donghyuck hates him right now, but just a little bit.

“God, I hate you so much,” Donghyuck mumbles, sliding Mark’s phone back to him, and Mark pockets it. Then Mark reaches over and lays his hand over Donghyuck’s, patting it lightly,

“How far along are you? I could help you out if you want? I mean,” and Mark makes a face, “it’s due tomorrow morning.”

 _Fuck._ Donghyuck has pages upon pages upon pages of notes lovingly scrawled into the margins of his Leuchtturm. He’d spent so long researching that he completely forgot that it was due in, oh, twenty hours. Mark must see the absolute despair on his face because his eyes go wide, and he whispers, hushed, “Have you even started?”

“Of course I’ve started,” Donghyuck snaps, knee-jerk, and Mark raises an eyebrow. “Kinda. It’s going. Sort of.”

“So, nothing?”

“I have, like, three hundred words.”

“Oh, shit.”

Donghyuck doesn’t even bother with a response, instead putting his head down on the table and making a low guttural moaning noise that’s sure to attract the local neighborhood zombies.

“Actually, you wanna come over?” Mark asks, and Donghyuck’s head snaps up so fast that he swears he got whiplash just now. Are his ears working? Mark doesn’t look like he’s joking. “I could help you write if you wanted to, and, I don’t know, you could bounce ideas off of me?”

The current situation in Donghyuck’s brain looks a little bit like this: go home alone and stare blankly at his computer screen until the sun rises and kicks his ass into finishing his article or go home with Mark and maybe get it done at a normal hour? Donghyuck’s lizard brain adds, unhelpfully, and then you can do _him_ , and Donghyuck shoves that thought back into the recesses of hell it came from. Work first, lizard brain, then play.

“Sure,” Donghyuck says, and Mark grins at him before turning back to his last chip crumbs, picking through them and finding one that isn’t already the size of a pebble.

“Aw, damn, you ate the last big ones?” Mark’s voice goes high, the way it only does when he’s begging Johnny to use the printer, and Donghyuck feels this weird mixture of attraction and disgust at the noise. Then again, it’s the same thing he feels whenever Jeno does anything at all, except more platonic, so maybe Mark is really rising up there in his friendship charts.

“I’ll buy you more later,” Donghyuck promises, and Mark honest to god _cheers_.

 

 

There’s a slight breeze tonight, ruffling Donghyuck’s hair and making him angle his face into the wind. They were on the way back to Mark’s place when Mark veered off the main road, saying, “I know this really good Chinese place, my roommate and I went there together,” and Donghyuck had no choice but to follow. As far as summers go, it’s not too hot, and the breeze is refreshing. Mark must feel the same, seeing as he’s shrugged off his cardigan and folded it over his arm.

“How long did they say it was gonna be again?”

Mark shrugs. “Like, five more minutes? I don’t know. I don’t really mind waiting, though.”

“Why? It’s cold.” Donghyuck scuffs his shoes against the pavement, running through the notes he’s already collected in his head. _Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock. Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols. Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, Marc Jacobs._ He’s not paying attention, not really, just letting his thoughts drift off.

“I guess I just like spending time with you.”

Donghyuck’s heart drops, and as if on cue, the speaker overhead crackles to life, a voice yelling out a number, and Mark starts. “Oh, that’s us. Hang on, lemme go inside and get it.”

This stupid crush is getting out of hand. Donghyuck needs to end this. He’s sure Mark’s just being friendly, like any normal human being, but every single time he does anything he doesn’t need to, it only lifts Donghyuck’s hopes up. Donghyuck’s still staring into the distance just thinking when Mark comes back, a baggie of takeout in his hands.

“Hey, let’s go,” Mark says, his voice shifting to concern. “Donghyuck? You okay?”

He shakes himself out of it. Be normal, Donghyuck. Just a friend, remember?

“I’m fine,” Donghyuck says, and Mark doesn’t look convinced. “Okay, you got me. I’m just, um. Dunno how to break this to you, but I kinda only have twelve hours before Doyoung eats me alive for breakfast.”

“At least you’ll go out doing something good for humanity.” The smile’s back on Mark’s face again, and they start walking back the way they came.

“Like what? In case you hadn’t noticed, if I don’t get this done, Doyoung’s going to be robbing humanity of _me_.” And Donghyuck sighs, a trembling note. “A Donghyuck is a terrible thing to waste.”

Donghyuck keeps talking just to fill the space in between them, keeps rambling about how Doyoung’s going to cook him in a pot of spicy shin ramyun and meal prep him to make him last, and Mark interjects once, asking, “Don’t you think you’re kinda obsessed with this idea of Doyoung eating you alive?”

Donghyuck wrinkles his nose at Mark and says, “Don’t you think you’re _not_ obsessed enough? Come on, Doyoung totally has it out for me.”

“Really? I think he likes you a lot.”

He stops dead in his tracks, staring at Mark’s back, before he runs to catch up. “What?”

“Yeah, apparently you’re the only one Doyoung hasn’t forced to go to HR to fill out the weekly compliance forms. He made me do it the other day, and it was so shitty. Waited in line for thirty minutes just to write some names and phone numbers down. Dude, I don’t think you’re giving yourself the credit you deserve.”

They stop in front of a large apartment complex, and Mark shifts the bag so he can reach for his keys. Mark’s apartment is on the third floor, all the way at the back of the building, and he makes a grandiose gesture in front of the door. “This is us.”

 

 

“I want you to kill me. Kill me,” Donghyuck moans around a mouthful of noodles, his ass planted firmly on a cushion on the ground and his arms stretched out in front of him on the table. The bowl of beef stew noodles is set precariously close to his laptop, but he doesn’t care. He lifts his head up to stare blankly at the screen. The cursor at the end of his last sentence blinks at him, taunting him, mocking him, and he slaps the table, making the bowls and plates rattle. “Stupid blinky. Go away.”

“You okay?” Mark looks around his laptop at him, and a little part of Donghyuck dies. He can’t even find it in him to admire how _normal_ Mark looks when he’s not wearing anything particularly nice, just a regular guy in a hoodie and glasses. Instead of staring at the other boy, Donghyuck looks at the clock instead. It’s almost nine, and he’s only written a hundred and fifty words in the past two hours. He blames Mark’s roommate’s boyfriend for perching himself on the couch and watching them write, which Donghyuck was only mildly weirded out by.

(“What?” Mark asked, turning around and craning his neck up to look at Renjun.

“Shut up, I’m trying to figure out why he looks so familiar,” Renjun murmured, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on his folded hands. His gaze was razor-sharp, and Donghyuck met it headlong. Like he was going to be cowed by Huang Renjun a second time. Then Renjun snapped his fingers and said, “I know!”

“Renjun, you literally just met him.”

“No, I met him before! Saw him at some party last semester, and he was crossed or something and told Yukhei he thought he was cute. And then he started crying!” Renjun’s eyes were a little bit wild, shining with the thrill of victory.

Donghyuck winced. He’d been hoping Renjun wouldn’t remember that, but disappointingly enough, Renjun was right on all counts. “In my defense, my friend and his boyfriend dared me to. Didn’t know he didn’t even know my name.”

“Well,” Mark said after some silence, “honestly, haven’t we all had crushes on Yukhei?”

Renjun was the first to smile, showing a pointed snaggletooth and his eyes crinkling at the edges, and Donghyuck found himself laughing, if just a little nervously. He hopped off the couch, whistling some show tune that Donghyuck vaguely recognized, and disappeared into the room at the end of the hallway. It was a few minutes before Donghyuck collected himself enough to speak up.

“Uh, is he always like that?”

“You mean terrifying? Intense? Looks like a marshmallow but could actually kill you? All of the above?”

“I’m not scared of him.” That was, in fact, a lie. Donghyuck had never met anyone he could match wits with, and it shook him to his core. If he was being honest, he was looking forward to spending more time around Renjun.

Mark nodded sagely. “Don’t worry, we all are, and it never really goes away.”

Donghyuck grinned. He’d met his equal at last. “Perfect.”)

“No,” Donghyuck says. “I’m dying.” He slumps forward, keysmashing with his forehead until he has to force himself to delete everything after his last real sentence, which, for the record, ended with “Michael Jackson.” If he’s going out, it’s going to be on a good note.

Mark’s hand reaches over the table and comes to rest on his own, his fingers smoothing over Donghyuck’s knuckles. “You’ll be fine.”

“Tell that to my word count and my dead body when Doyoung doesn’t have a Word file in his email at eight sharp.” Donghyuck feels Mark’s fingers tighten around his, and he looks up to see Mark staring at him. “What?”

“You’ve worked too hard and for too long just to give up on your dreams like this. Just start writing without worrying about how it’s not going to be perfect from the get-go and get your words down. We can worry about making it the best it can be once you’re done, but seriously. If this is what you’ve always wanted to do, why not at least show Doyoung what you’ve got?” Mark gives Donghyuck’s clenched fist a pat before settling back into a more comfortable position. “I’ll be your second pair of eyes.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Donghyuck grumbles, but he shifts to get the squishiest parts of the pillow under him. He straightens up and cracks his knuckles before stretching his back, which makes a noise that has Mark wincing. “Alright, one thousand more words. I can do this.”

Mark cheers, and Donghyuck hides his smile in a cough. No more distractions. Only writing now.

 

 

It’s well past midnight by the time Donghyuck’s done, pumping his fists into the air when he pushes that last key, and he collapses onto the couch to watch Mark as he edits, annotating his comments in the margins as he goes and marking Donghyuck’s copy up. Donghyuck has just barely enough energy to read over the edits Mark’s made so he can accept some of them and turn others down.

“My phrasing here was better,” Donghyuck tells Mark after one comment of his gets shot down, and Mark shrugs, a wry smile on his lips.

“That happens. You win some, you lose some. But hey, you’re done, Donghyuck. Want a gold star?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Donghyuck mumbles, making a half-hearted attempt to swat Mark on the knee and failing miserably. He pitches forward, his forehead landing squarely onto Mark’s thigh, and he closes his eyes. “Holy shit, I’m so sleepy. What time is it again?”

“Almost two.”

“ _Fuck_ , I need to get home. How did it get so late?”

“You can just stay here.” Mark puts a hand on the back of Donghyuck’s head. It’s a hesitant touch at first, but when Donghyuck doesn’t push him away, Mark runs his fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “You could take the bed if you wanted.”

The bed sounds great, but. Well.

“The couch is fine,” Donghyuck mumbles sleepily into Mark’s thigh. He smells good, unlike anything Donghyuck’s ever caught a whiff of before, and it’s not Yukhei’s expensive cologne or Renjun’s powdery scent, either. He just smells like Mark, which he’ll realize in the morning is really just a typical boy smell, but right now, it’s calming.

He barely registers crawling onto the couch, barely registers Mark disappearing into his room and carefully draping a blanket over his shoulders. He just remembers Mark.

 

 

 **From:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**To:** dykim@neocouture.ac.kr  
**Subject:** Music and Fashion Through the Years

Hi Doyoung,

I’ve attached the final draft of my article to this email. Thanks for all of the guidance you’ve given me throughout this process, and please let me know what edits or changes I can make.

Best,  
Donghyuck

Attachments: MusicFashion_Final.docx, MusicFashion_Final.gdoc

 

 

To Donghyuck’s massive surprise, Doyoung doesn’t start the day with a bloodbath. He responds to Donghyuck’s email with a “Thank you for being so prompt with your submission, I’ll review your article as soon as I can,” and Donghyuck practically vibrates with excitement the entire morning. He even grabs everyone in the office coffee after he gets Doyoung’s email, skipping with light steps to HR to pass them their drinks.

Mark gives him a raised eyebrow over their laptops, and Donghyuck writes _lost the bet_ on a post-it before folding it into an airplane and plopping it onto Mark’s side of the table. Mark opens it, and he grins at Donghyuck.

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“Believe it,” Donghyuck says, shooting finger guns at Mark. “My poor wallet, though, the coffee I grabbed for everyone else was the free one from the jug downstairs. Yours is some high quality shit.”

Mark looks down at his frappuccino, and he bites his lip before looking back up at Donghyuck. “I got a better idea for the bet.”

“What’s that? You’re not supposed to change it after you win, cheater.”

“Loser has to get lunch with the winner.”

Donghyuck blinks. “We already do that all the time, though?”

“No, I mean,” Mark fumbles over the words. “Like, on Saturday. Not on a work day. Not as coworkers.”

It takes a while for the gears to click into place, but when they do, Donghyuck’s eyes widen. “Mark Lee, are you asking me out? On a date?”

“No offense, but what did you think I was doing every time I bought you lunch?”

“I thought you were just being nice!”

“Well, one or two times is nice, yeah, but I thought you caught on after the eighth time I paid for you.” Mark looks so unbelievably shy that Donghyuck just wants to reach over and pinch his cheeks, cooing like any Korean grandma would. Instead, he grabs another post-it and scribbles on it and sends the airplane flying over to Mark, who catches it and opens it. A smile spreads across Mark’s face, and he writes something before folding it up and sending it back over to Donghyuck.

Donghyuck unwraps it.

 _do u like me?_ Donghyuck had written, and below that, Mark scrawled _yes!!!! A LOT!!!!!!! UR SO CUTE!!!!! TT what abt movie + lunch on sat?_

“Yes,” Donghyuck says. His cheeks almost hurt from how much he’s been grinning like a lovesick idiot lately. It’s not something he minds, though. Not at all. “Yes.”

 

 

 **From:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**To:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**Subject:** Very Important Work Email

Hey,

Is it bad if I really want to kiss you right now?

 

 **From:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**To:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**Subject:** RE: Very Important Work Email

Oh wait same but I’m literally too scared of Doyoung to TTTTTTTTT

 

 **From:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**To:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**Subject:** RE: RE: Very Important Work Email

Meet me in the sixth floor break room in ten? Just checked the google calendar and it’s empty :)

 

 **From:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**To:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**Subject:** RE: RE: RE: Very Important Work Email

FINALLY A GOOD IDEA

 

 

(They don’t even manage to make it to the break room. Mark catches Donghyuck in the stairwell, presses him up against the wall, hands on his hips, and asks, with the cheekiest grin on his face, “Aren’t you glad you spilled coffee on me?”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” Donghyuck says pleasantly, and he grabs Mark’s collar and pulls him in. His hand curls around Mark’s neck, and he feels Mark’s fingers skim over his waist, and Mark’s lips are warm and soft against his own. And when Mark makes a pleased noise, small and soft, Donghyuck catalogues it for future reference. Yeah, screw platonic friendship— this is much better.)

 

 

The next time he drops by Jaemin’s apartment for a quick chat, he stops dead in his tracks as soon as he waltzes inside. Jeno and Jaemin have stopped making out on the futon to stare at Donghyuck, and while the image of Jaemin with his hand up Jeno’s shirt isn’t one Donghyuck wants to relive, it can’t be worse than whatever it is on Donghyuck’s face that’s making them stare at him like that.

“Uh? Guys? What’s up?”

Jeno’s the one to sniff the air again. “Donghyuckie,” he says, hushed. “When’d you get laid? Weren’t you still hung up on that Mark guy?”

“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t— what?”

“Then why do you smell so much like alpha? Like someone scented you or whatever.” Jaemin wrinkles his nose. “It’s like— they put their smell all over you so you just smell like them.”

“You guys are crazy,” Donghyuck says, already backing out of the apartment, but then he pauses. All over him?

The pieces all fall into place, one by one, and Donghyuck can’t help the grin that blooms across his face, bright and beautiful, and it doesn’t waver, not even when Jeno’s eyes widen in sudden realization. He darts away, slamming the door behind him, but not before snaps a quick photo of Jeno pushing Jaemin off of him in his haste to get Donghyuck to reveal his secrets.

Not today, though.

He has a date to get to. Before that, though, he sends a quick email.

 

 

 **From:** dhlee@uksm.ac.kr  
**To:** marklee@smu.ac.kr  
**Subject:** (no subject)

HOLY SHIT SAVE ME MY FRIENDS THREATENING TO KILL ME BC I HAVE SECRETS (u!!) cant wait to see u later~ yay~

Attachment: IMG_1013.jpg

**Author's Note:**

> ever since i wrote the first part, i knew i had to write a markhyuck sequel... i just didn't expect it to take so long but ty all for waiting!! ~_~ 
> 
> \- based heavily off of the regular teasers, the disney short paperman, and my own experiences as a n*wspaper int*rn.. donghyuck learns to use indesign and hates every moment of it and mark dies during late nights. rip  
> \- my yukren agenda slipped yikes  
> \- i wrote about half of this while listening to the wayv teasers don't @ me about slipping the new rookies in!! donghyuck needs roomies!!  
> \- honestly renjun scares me a little bit i'm terrified of teens  
> \- title is from chuu's heart attack, which... yea....... par for the course for a series titled heart attack
> 
> fun fact it's been exactly 222 days since i posted the nomin part :-D yay!
> 
> i'm on both [bird app](http://twitter.com/gaImaegi) & [cat app](http://curiouscat.me/jenuyu) as always~ thank you so much for reading! <3


End file.
